Chad Brooks: Worship, Society and the inbreaking kingdom

May 03, 2010

Preaching, Mindmapping, and the Apocalypse of John

I have the opportunity to preach from my favorite book of the bible this week, St. John's Apocalypse...or as most people know it Revelation.

Usually when I actually have time to prepare a sermon, I like to do a mind map before I start writing the sermon. It is another way of doing an outline, but it helps me trace a non-linear pattern through the text. It works for folks that are scatter brained like I am.

I have different sorts of annotations that I use, and the scan didn't show some highlighted colors, but this style works well for me. I imagine I could preach from the mind map if I needed, but I am trying to become more of a wordsmith, and that requires doing some writing beforehand.

Revelation is a non-linear book, and I think that in this particular situation mind-mapping works well. One of the major ways to tie the book together is the Μετὰ ταῦτα εἶδον passages (translated as After this I saw/looked in many English translations). These phrases string together a series of visionary experiences that weren't sequential, but descriptive of an "all at once" experience (seen in 4:1,7:1,7:9.15:, 18:1 and 19:1). Due to the cycliromatic nature of Revelation and it's ordering-mind mapping allows you to preach from the same style as the visions are portrayed.